Bad Students, Not Bad Schools

What of the fact that years of teaching apathetic, uninterested students makes for apathetic teachers?

Most of my teachers in high school were wrecks. That is, they had been ruined by the reality they could not bear; namely that their students did not care, and did not have the capacity to care.

Did the apathetic teacher come first or did the apathetic student? The stupidity of the bureaucracy came later; I know that much. Both teachers and students are the issue. My school is shit, and no one tries to prepare us for university/college although it is their responsibility. It's not only ruined students, but that certainly attributes to the issue. Lack of competition within the system is a negative as well. The system is cracked, and a lot will have to been done to rectify the plethora of problems (even though many are simple fixes, humanism stands in the way too).

What of the fact that years of teaching apathetic, uninterested students makes for apathetic teachers?

Most of my teachers in high school were wrecks. That is, they had been ruined by the reality they could not bear; namely that their students did not care, and did not have the capacity to care.

You've nailed it down. This is what those who teach have to say about the arrangement and I am inclined to agree with them and the Bad Students author. Liberal permissiveness and fairness bears a cost that cannot be recovered.

The society must have higher standards as a whole, which means that the teachers must be harder on the parents, which in this comfort dominated society cannot do.

Well, a lot of parents have the idea that the school system is corrupt, or useless, and somehow out to ruin their kids. So #1 they don't listen to the teachers and #2 they stick up for the apathy and misbehavior of their children.

I've seen this happen; a lot of parents like nothing more than a reason to fight with their child's teachers.

The society must have higher standards as a whole, which means that the teachers must be harder on the parents, which in this comfort dominated society cannot do.

Well, a lot of parents have the idea that the school system is corrupt, or useless, and somehow out to ruin their kids. So #1 they don't listen to the teachers and #2 they stick up for the apathy and misbehavior of their children.

I've seen this happen; a lot of parents like nothing more than a reason to fight with their child's teachers.

I agree, there is a lot of disrespect. Teachers sometimes do it for themselves, but in the end no one (including students, teachers, parents, politicians, staff) wants to create a holistic and smooth system.

The new dumbness is particularly deadly to middle- and upper-middle-class kids already made shallowby multiple pressures to conform imposed by the outside world on their usually lightly rooted parents.When they come of age, they are certain they must know something because their degrees and licensessay they do. They remain so convinced until an unexpectedly brutal divorce, a corporate downsizing inmidlife, or panic attacks of meaninglessness upset the precarious balance of their incomplete humanity,their stillborn adult lives.

The individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on principal questions or on theirimplication; this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the best of]conditions....Once personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared or have atrophied,they will not simply reappear when propaganda is suppressed...years of intellectual andspiritual education would be needed to restore such faculties. The propagandee, if deprived ofone propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the agony of findinghimself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion.

Once the best children are broken to such a system, they disintegrate morally, becoming dependent ongroup approval. A National Merit Scholar in my own family once wrote that her dream was to be "asmall part in a great machine." It broke my heart.

What kids dumbed down by schooling canít do is tothink for themselves or ever be at rest for very long without feeling crazy; stupefied boys and girlsreveal dependence in many ways easily exploitable by their knowledgeable elders.

According to official reports, only a small fraction of thepopulation is capable of what you and I call mental life: creative thought, analytical thought,judgmental thought, a trio occupying the three highest positions on Bloomís Taxonomy of EducationalObjectives. Just how small a fraction would shock you. According to experts, the bulk of the mob ishopelessly dumb, even dangerously so.

Perhaps youíre a willing accomplice to this social coup whichrevived the English class system. Certainly you are if your own child has been rewarded with a "giftedand talented" label by your local school.

The shocking possibility that dumb people donít exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the careersdevoted to tending to them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my proposition: Mass dumbness firsthad to be imagined; it isnít real.

If you obsess about conspiracy, what youíll fail to see is that we are held fast by a form of highlyabstract thinking fully concretized in human institutions which has grown beyond the power of themanagers of these institutions to control. If there is a way out of the trap weíre in, it wonít be byremoving some bad guys and replacing them with good guys.

The shocking possibility that dumb people donít exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the careersdevoted to tending to them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my proposition: Mass dumbness firsthad to be imagined; it isnít real.

If you obsess about conspiracy, what youíll fail to see is that we are held fast by a form of highlyabstract thinking fully concretized in human institutions which has grown beyond the power of themanagers of these institutions to control. If there is a way out of the trap weíre in, it wonít be byremoving some bad guys and replacing them with good guys.

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This guy does not understand that there is a problem of too many stupid people, but his point on the "lost" folk is valid. There are the people that are intelligent to make an ounce of success, but are trapped in the false morality. That is a reason sites like ANUS are running. Whoever Mandrake quoted also dodges any solution, but hints that a rigid system underlies this false morality and it must must be abolished.

Kenneth Freeman concluded his unique study The Schools of Hellas in 1907 with this summary, "There were no schools in Hellas." No place boys and girls spent their youth attending continuous instruction under command of strangers. Indeed, nobody did homework in the modern sense; none could be located on standardized tests. The tests that matteredcame in living, striving to meet ideals that local tradition imposed. The word skŲle itself means leisure, leisure in a formal garden to think and reflect.The word pedagogue is Latin for a specialized class of slave assigned to walk a student to theschoolmasterAnd yet we often refer to the science of modern schooling as pedagogy.

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@LevySpearmen: I guess the issue is that the dumb mass is not a natural one ( but it would really be a "mass" when completely natural? i wonder, cause nature does not know or need to level down enybody) when it's number grows by those dumbed down, or should i say educated (perfect for modern political means and goals, of course). It's not a shame or a fault when an intellect it is not as capable as another but when capable kids are reduced by the regular educational system (ie public, compulsory, official what have you) to good servants, when they could have been great individuals just by being left alone, to learn from their mistakes, from their parents, following their natural directions, instincts, talents etc Also, i see no shame in being good only at simple things, i see no fault to let's say the ancient uneducated simple folk that knew only their work (agriculture, crafts, hunting etc, and they knew it good, cause their life depended on it). It is healthy for an individual to be no more and no less than what he can be.This is possible only by learning from life, facing it, thinking, fighting to survive.The modern effort of "enlightenment through culture and science" alters this order of things beyond recognition, simply through schooling.

There is no modern view of society that is not based on re-education (with everything it implies), since there is no social order to be called both modern and natural.